


War and Peace

by RAXip



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Family, Gen, gulag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-21
Updated: 2015-01-21
Packaged: 2018-03-08 12:12:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3208703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RAXip/pseuds/RAXip
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Heavy Weapons Guy wasn't always a killing machine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	War and Peace

I loved to read after supper. I had a favorite chair, and I remember it fondly.

It was a quiet evening, and our mother was in bed early, for she often fell ill the year following Bronya’s birth. It was only Yana and I in the sitting room. She was playing with her toy horse and buggy on the floor, while I read an old copy of Leo Tolstoy.

“Misha, do you know that bookstore we used to borrow books from?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. I was surprised she remembered it. 

“Why don’t we go there anymore?”

“It closed down last summer.”

“Okay.” She continued playing. 

“It closed down the day papa came home with all those bruises. Don’t you remember that?” Zhanna said. I hadn’t known that she was standing in the hallway, but there she was, looking in the mirror as she brushed her hair. “The two men that owned the bookstore were his friends.”

“What happened to papa?” Yana said.

Still absorbed in her reflection, she replied “He tried to stop the men who came for the store owners. But they beat him and threw everyone out, and then burned all the books in the shop.”

“Zhanna!” I said sharply. She pretended not to notice.

But now my small sister was worried. Her gaze darted back and forth between the two of us. “Why would they do that? Misha, why would they do that?”

When I didn’t answer right away, Zhanna cut in once again. “Because the Gulag found out they were doing bad things.”

“Zhanna is only trying to scare you. Papa was in a lumber accident.”

“But why would someone burn all those books? She isn’t lying about the books, is she, Misha?” Yana said.

Her fair hair was twisted into two braids on top of her head, but she had the same dark eyes as her sisters, eyes that were filled with worry. I couldn’t bring myself to lie again. “Yes, they burned the books.”

 

Yana's questions came for weeks after that, and I answered them as truthfully as I could, without revealing too much. I knew that Zhanna would be all too happy to tell her the twisted combination of things she had overheard from father and the rumors in town. She arrogantly believed that secrets only had value in being told. 

 

The night they shot papa, he was sitting in that same chair. That is when I changed. It was the moment when I felt hatred like I’d never known. As they took us away, I knew I could kill these men without an ounce of remorse.

But Zhanna, her moment came later, and I watched it happen in her. They held her down and shaved off her beautiful, long brown hair. There it was, that sick anger. It never fully left either of us.


End file.
